We all have the horror stories about boat-yards or mechanics doing less than quality work, or outright ripping us off. But does any one have a story of a yard or mechanic that deserves kudos for actually doing their job in a professional and or timely manner? I do most of my own work due to a lousy history with a large boat-yard in the Greatlakes area and am wondering if there is a truely reputable yard or mechanic out there.

Milford Boat Works ordered some small parts for my Edson pedestal. Edson shipped double the part order to Milford Boat Works free of charge so I would have spares on board and Milford Boat Works passed it on to me.
It's a 20 year old pedestal, Edson did not have to do that and I would have never known if Milford Boat Works wasn't so honest. And I don't even have my boat at their marina.

John James Technical Marine Service - Jabins boatyard Annapolis Md area -does diesel, refridge, electrical etc..
My transmission started slipping last month. After Westerbeke got back confirming my warranty status (it's a year old) they sent me to Bay Shore Marine here in A-town; they ahole at the service desk told me it would be several weeks until they could schedule me an appointment. You read that right, weeks to find out how many weeks until they come look.

So I called John Miller of JohnJames - He actually returns calls and emails !!!

He came by two days later, looked at the fluid, listened to the valve said 'yep, needs replaced', and if all goes well I'll have a new one in this week.

Thanks guys, I think we get too much bad news and need a bit of positive feedback to offset it. My best recent story is that Hartshorne Marina in Muskegon Michigan allowed me to leave my boat for a week , as I had an emergency at home in Monroe, charging me only for the 2 days I was actually on board.

Iput Paloma into the Port Isabella boatyard (I'm 500 miles north in Fort Worth) for quite a bit of work, I paid over the phone and later realized that I need several other things done. It took a couple of months to get down there to move the boat and when I got the final bill, it was less that then final amount of work and the office manager said - I took a couple of things off, you've paid enough already. Further, they did not charge me yard storage for the extra month the boat sat in one of their travel lift slips.

Jeffery Moss at Port Kinsale Marina in Kinsale, VA is great. He removed the fuel tank from our last boat and cleaned out the sludge and reinstalled at an extremely reasonable rate (shop rate times a reasonable #hours). He even took pictures of the sludge and cleaned tank! Jeff also repainted the waterline stripe on our old boat at a good price. Their former yard manager, JC, also convinced me to have our current boat's waterline stripe buffed out instead of being repainted.

John Oliver really worked wonders on our heat pump when it would no longer do A/C. He converted it to A/C only and recharged it for about $200. He also tried to get our refrig going, but it was leaking badly and he strongly recommended NOT repairing it. He recommended a new DC unit instead.

I find that it really helps to show great interest in their work, how they're doing it, and the technical details behind the whys and hows. Walking up to the service desk at a yard and saying "something's wrong, fix it" is like saying "blank check". I know because I've been on the service side of the desk when I was much younger.

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